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Discerning Your Threshold for Violence and Sexuality in Media

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I thought I would love Game of Thrones because I’m all about high fantasy with serious themes. When Ned Stark died in Season One, I realized just how serious the show was going to be. The stories of vengeance, frustration, hopefulness, and ruthlessness all captured my attention. But by the end of Season Three, I noticed something troubling me after I watched each episode.

I’ve always taken sexual abuse very seriously. The rape scene in Show Girls left me shaking and furious. I could not finish watching A Clockwork Orange because the scenes of rape filled me with so much rage that I was ready to destroy something. This fury is partly why I stopped watching Game of Thrones, but has also extended to all media that I participate in. I watched The Magicians until the end of Season One, where a graphic rape scene is played out. I don’t like feeling that angry and media that continually returns to scenes of sexual violence leaves me in a state of constant agitation, which bleeds into my life and causes discord in all my relationships.

The more I pack into my mind, the harder it is on me and the more I suffer.

To add to that, I have friends who have been sexually assaulted. I’ve spent time with them listening to their pain and anguish. As an empathetic person, I feel their stress, fear, and suffering when they talk about it. My wife has experienced significant sexual trauma and a big part of our relationship has been filled with sorting that out and trying to find peace amidst that sorrow. The specter of sexual abuse haunts the victim for many years, sometimes never fully leaving and manifesting in all sorts of ways at inconvenient times and places. Having intimately engaged with someone in that struggle, seeing it play out on screen hits hard.

I also have a very good memory, particularly for images. When studying for exams I would spend a portion of the time staring at my notes because I could picture the pages again and re-read things written. If lose my keys or wallet I can imagine my day like a movie in reverse and figure out where I left them. If strong emotions are tied to an event, it leaves an even more vivid imprint on my mind. So scenes of sexual violence that produce strong anger responses stay with me. I can still picture that scene from Show Girls as if I saw it yesterday. I remember the shower scene in American History X in full colour. Sansa’s story of violent abuse is easy to recollect. Even Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth books have burned images of sexual exploitation and rape into my mind that I cannot shake. Combined with the true stories I’ve endured from friends and loved ones, I feel overwhelmed with disgust, anger, sorrow, fear and pain.

I’ve come to see that the more I pack into my mind, the harder it is on me and the more I suffer. I’ve hit a capacity for seeing these graphic images and now every new one adds a scar on my heart. While I am willing to endure the pain to help real people overcome their suffering and share in their burdens, I am no longer willing to take those blows for entertainment.

I recently watched the first season if Westworld, and though there is one moment of implied forced sex, it happens off screen and it left little impact on me. The sex and nudity in that show don’t impact me the way violence within the same framework does, though the same images might be a problem for someone else.

Media impacts us all differently. There are some reasonable assumptions we can make (for example, watching pornography will likely induce lust and extreme graphic violence will turn people’s stomachs), but my threshold for certain imagery is not the same as the next person’s. The images of rape and abuse in Game of Thrones may not be as problematic for someone else, while nudity and sexuality in Westworld may be a big issue. Still others may find the violence in Mortal Kombat X nightmare-inducing.

It’s easy to condemn media for being too racy or too violent or inappropriate, but in doing so we only teach people how to form laws without reasons.

As a parent, there are shows I avoid watching with my kids, but as they get older I talk with them about how media affects our minds and hearts rather than drawing lines in the sand.

It’s easy to condemn media for being too racy or too violent or inappropriate, but in doing so we only teach people how to form laws without reasons, forcing them to conform to a set of standards without the freedom to talk about it. This hurts our society and makes it impossible to actually deal with the problems we have. But if we talk about why media harms us or how we’re impacted by it, we teach people how to censor themselves. So we maintain freedom in our society, but create places to talk about how things make us feel and the impact they have on an individual. I think doing this creates a society that loves and respects individuals rather than condemns or belittles people.

This focusing on the individual nature of sin instead of rules for rules’ sake is actually explained in a few different places in the Bible (Jeremiah 17:10, Romans 7:7-24, James 4:11-12, Romans 14), and yet often it is Christians who attempt to force morality and censorship on society based on unrealistic expectations. Instead, I hope to create a climate in my home and my social circles where we can talk about what bothers us and why. Where we can support each other even if we don’t agree. Where I can watch or play what I like, but have the sensitivity to turn it off when you’re around, if it bothers you, because I love you. And where we can talk about the rich characters and story of Game of Thrones together, but without the deep sexual violence that so graphically covers the screen and leaves me with more scars.

Dustin spends his time exploring the far reaches of space, understand the ancient ways of might and magic, and wandering the post-apocalyptic wastes. If it has a reasonably open world, a crafting system and some way to sneak around, he'll be there. When not gaming, he's probably planning his next D&D character (because his DM keeps killing off the old ones). He is a competent bass player and guitarist, mediocre mid laner and outright awful FPS player. He is father of two, husband of one, a sometimes theologian, and all-times pastor of Crestview Park Free Methodist Church in Winnipeg, MB.

I think that as a Christian, I have tendency to want to see things in black and white, right or wrong, sin or not a sin. Some things work like that, but except for maybe at it’s extremes (the example you gave with pornography for instance), media rarely does, maybe because it’s so personal and human. I hope that we’ll be thinkers in how we approach media as Christians, not quickly delegating one piece under one label and others under another, but really thinking about all that media can stir in us related to our personal selves, mankind, and God, but also in how we react to individual pieces and how that affects our hearts, to think about those varying lines we each have, and to take that into consideration as we approach which pieces are best for us to consume, and which we’re better of leaving alone.

Dustin Schellenberg

i think this is particularly important to talk about our lines and how we set them with others so they can understand and respect our boundaries without judgment. Likewise it gives an oppurtunity to discuss how we govern ourselves with our faith without sounding dogmatic or intolerant.

Eddie

Nice article and while I can see the value in your stance for the gray areas some shows live in (which I view Westworld and Game of Thrones as less gray than you), there has to be a line somewhere. There is media that is universally bad or exploitative (pornography to use your example) and not condemning something like that means you are okay with that media, and that you are okay with the harm it can do. There is a lot of gray out there, but at the ends of the spectrum there is darkness and light, and when those instances occur, just being permissive doesn’t help anyone.

Dustin Schellenberg

To say having a conversation about how something impacts and us rather than open condemnation is permission or acceptance is a bit presumptuous and not at all fair. If I walk over to my neighbour’s house and say “hey, GoT/Pornography, etc is wrong” they will likely respond with an aggressive expletive letting me know they don’t care what I say, regardless of how they feel about that thing. The voice of condemnation is almost universally resisted even if its against something that doesn’t matter to us.
Now I never say this is good media or right media nor do I condone it if it doesn’t bother you like it does me. But by talking about how it troubles me I invite you to think about if it troubles you, or if it should. That policy of ” talk[ing] with [people] about how media affects our minds and hearts rather than drawing lines in the sand” creates a forum of discussion rather than battle lines and defensive responses. Notice when i talk about even pornography or extreme visual gore I address the response it produces rather than the media itself because that is perhaps the more significant thing as it pertains to this issue. I’m not saying exploitation or dehumanization is good, I’m actually not talking about that at all because this article would become several pages long and cover a multitude of things. What I’m trying, at the heart, to say is that 1) there are important reasons to avoid watching sexually violent media, particularly for entertainment, besides conservative religious views. and 2) if you teach someone how to critically think for themselves and become sensitive to the way media impacts them, you won’t have to tell them what allowed or not, they will know.
Now this final point, from a Christian perspective, is especially important because we won’t always have leaders around to tell us what to do and instead need to become more sensitive to the Spirit of God to discern that. Making rules does not teach discernment or sensitivity to the Spirit, only practicing those things does. So again I advocate for learning how to better hear the Spirit and understand what it is leading you to or away from because that is a far deeper and healthier faith existence.

Eddie

You got me on that first sentence, I was a little presumptuous there and I am sorry. But I still stand by the rest of my argument, even though most of what you have said is legitimate and worthy of pursuing, what worries me is that it is all framed around the individual without any kind of universal anchoring. Thus when it comes to talking with others with that kind of framework, while you will change some minds, you will also find others as dismissive as if you just walked up and said “That’s bad!” and then walked away. This is because when the conversation is anchored by personal experience without universal truth, all one has to have is a different experience than you to just dismiss you out of hand. I am advocating for a combined approach of talking about how the media affects you, but also being willing to call the clear cut cases wrong. There is good media, there is bad media, and there is in between, what makes it those is the effects it has on our hearts and minds and to separate the two is like saying candy isn’t bad for you, it’s what your body does when you eat candy that is bad for you and candy is neutral.

Kyla

Eddie, I like your idea of a combined approach and I agree that we can’t base everything on personal experience, but I’m wondering who sets the universal truth, because it’ll be different for different circles. I know that a lot of Christians wouldn’t permit most geeky media because of the fantastical element (and some are relatives of mine). And, while I’m not condoning the use of pornography, there are people for whom “porn is bad” is not a universal truth.

Eddie

The Bible is expansive but not exhaustive, so there are the important points of morality where the Bible hits on and those high points filter down to inform the rest. And it’s that filtering down which moves things into the gray area where discussion, discernment, and spiritual sensitivity is key and people will come to differing conclusions (see Romans 14). But those high points which are hit on directly by the Bible are clear cut and definitive, and while discussion and discernment is still beneficial, the final answer as to if it is right or wrong has already been made. To continue with the pornography example, that one is clear cut because the reasoning behind it’s creation goes against a key teaching of the Bible which is to not look at others with lust, which Jesus taught is effectively adultery. Discussion about the effects on the people viewing and the people producing it are excellent conversations, but when asked if it’s right or wrong and differing to personal experience then changes the framework of the conversation to something more “me” focused and relative. Something being universal means it holds true everywhere and with everyone.

Dustin Schellenberg

Eddie, loving the conversation by the way, really appreciate your willingness to engage in this and have deeper conversations! It is interesting, and worth noting, that when Jesus says that to look at someone with lust is to commit adultery he then immediately says that you should remove your own eye to stop it. Obviously he wasn’t advocating self mutilation, but was perhaps saying that its not the pretty lady/man that is the problem, it’s you.

Eddie

Thanks, it’s nice to have conversations without vitriol or outright dismissal because i believe in “fairy tales”. As for your comparison, it’s apples and oranges. You speak of our own personal responsibility to control our urges and guard your mind, what I refer to is the creating and distributing of media to specifically induce lustful urges. Just because we are rightly responsible for our own actions, doesn’t mean pornography is neutral.

Eddie, I do think you’re missing something in a desire to brand something innately evil. Dustin is lauding the value of personal discernment over judgment. While godly discernment would likely lead all to abstain from pornography .. we must be cautious to not make it a universal judgement.

Universal judgements have rarely served as well as a society or Christian community. We so often get it wrong or hold onto judgements long past their expiration date. If we held true to discernment and solely discernment we would be far stronger as a faith and far more impactful in growing ourselves and in showing the light of Christ around us.

Eddie

Yes, godly discernment has the benefits of helping you abstain from things that are bad, but just because bad judgments in the area of media have been made doesn’t negate the value of having those judgments for extreme cases. There are universal judgments against rape, murder, theft, and the like and those serve us and society well, so i don’t think universal judgments are the issue, especially since God makes some of those in the Bible too. But since this discussion has been about media, I can see why you would hold that stance because of previous missteps, but I still think there is media that is universally wrong, with porn being our ongoing example.

Dustin Schellenberg

Please do not hear me saying pornography is neutral, I think it is an extremely destructive thing that deals almost exclusively in dehumanizing people, presents sex as something vastly different than it is thereby ruining many a young man or woman and seeks to gratify self without thought to another. And I think the message of that is the one that we should speak about, and I think we do as Christians well. I’ve read a lot of good studies on the impact of pornography on both an individual and society and hope we as a society continue to produce those studies to safeguard our communities. One of the reasons I wrote this article was to talk about how different shows that depict scenes of graphic violence do hurt me, and how I’ve come to a place of no longer engaging because of that pain, and hopefully that will resonate with others so they too can either make those steps or realize they aren’t alone in feeling that way.

The unfortunate reality in our society though is that lust is a perfectly fine thing and people are actually more than happy to engage in things that induce it. There are a lot of people, even Christians, who are not close enough to God to feel that conviction. Others feel it but don’t know how to stop it or deal with it. Both need someone to focus more on their spiritual development rather than their sin. Jesus sat with people of ill repute before talking about repentance so I think its fair to talk about conviction coming out of sharing story and life with someone rather than drawing lines of right and wrong.

A very wise pastor went to the line for me when I was younger and smoked while singing on a worship team and serving on the church board. He was getting a lot of grief from people in the church about it so took me out for coffee and asked honestly why I smoked. We had a conversation about it, health dangers and all sorts of stuff around that but he never once was condemning about it. At the end of the conversation he told me people were complaining about it but as long as I was willing to prayerfully approach the habit and ask God if it was a problem or not and be willing to quit if God ever said it was, then he’d defend me. He also invited me to meet with him and pray about that and a thousand other things to become closer to God. I never felt condemnation or judgment from him even though we talked honestly about reasons why me smoking wasn’t great. The reality of the situation was that God had a lot more for me to work on that was much more important than smoking (something I don’t really even consider a sin, but is rightly bad for a person). Eventually I did feel that conviction and was more prepared to face the struggle of quitting because of his love and support and helping me prepare to lean on God for guidance in that issue. I honestly think that if we, as the church, approached more sin this way (at least the stuff that isn’t imminently dangerous to self or others) we would cause less grief and see more lasting change in people’s lives.

As a pastor now I don’t often say to someone that something is out-rightly wrong, particularly when it comes to media, regardless of whether I believe it it is or isn’t. Instead I go to scripture and honestly present what scripture says and then invite them into a conversation about how to respond. I’ve seen more people thoughtfully change their lives and experience freedom this way than I ever saw in churches that condemned something without that grace. It does mean walking with people a lot more and really wrestling, but the outcome is so much more life giving and life sustaining.

Eddie

Thanks for that testimony, that is an excellent story of approaching people with grace when there is concern and I appreciate you sharing that. With that I suppose I should share my side in that I was one of those people who struggled with pornography in my life, and then attained freedom through God’s help and the accountability from those around me. I wasn’t condemned or thrown out and I would never advocate for those actions because they are counterproductive, and it hasn’t been my point to do that. Your story and your methods I think are an excellent way to approach things of this nature and so don’t think I am saying you think porn is neutral or that you don’t want what is best for those around you, spiritually and otherwise. In your final paragraph you see my stance as condemning without grace, while I initially thought your method was grace with no truth, but neither of those situations are what I am getting at, I am looking at the middle ground. Grace with truth, which Jesus embodied perfectly, is where there is right and wrong, which can be spoken in love, but instead of condemning or ostracizing, it’s coming alongside to discuss and work with them to overcome. Something you seem to already do when you present the scriptures to people, showing God’s truth to them, truth which is timeless and universal. So in the end I think we both agree, we just went down different roads with this article.

Dustin Schellenberg

I believe that the Holy Spirit convicts people and draws them towards repentance and they have the choice whether to respond or resist. I also believe it does this to both Christian and non. So my job, as a Christian, is to work with the Spirit in that call and hopefully help someone move to a place of closeness with God. I am confident enough in this that I am willing to let the Spirit have its way in this trusting that it will convict what is necessary when it is necessary rather than in my opinions or time. So the process is always one of humble walker on the path with someone who shares the story of how that effected me and asks the question of what the Spirit is calling you to. And I agree that can seem like it is letting people just get away with what I’d call sin, and maybe it is. My personal experience with media particularly though has been that when I take it to God in prayer there is a sense of conviction or not, and that has allowed me both to overcome and feel at peace with my decisions.

Now again I’d say in the areas of exploitation, dehumanization and the like having a strong voice against those is both necessary and good, and there can be places to say an industry or a genre seems to revel in those things, but that criticism gets to the spirit of the thing rather than the face value. The back of a bus isn’t a bad place, but making people sit there because of their colour is. Sex is a gift from God, but forcing it on someone is the deepest perversion of holiness. These are pretty extreme things and obviously cause immediate danger so the universal right or wrongness is pretty easy, we have laws about them because we all agree. And perhaps that points to a universal anchoring that reinforces my first paragraph here. As a Christian I would certainly say that the laws we put into place to protect innocence have been motivated by the Holy Spirit amongst us, even those who do not know Christ as Lord.

I believe we are in total agreement when you say what makes something good, bad or in-between media is how it effects our hearts and minds, and that is really what I have been saying all along. Where we likely are differing is that I believe there might be people whose hearts and minds are not effected like mine, so for them it isn’t bad media. To borrow your candy metaphor, not all sugar is bad for you but the way we take it in and to what degree is. And if you’re diabetic that changes dramatically. I or 2 candies probably aren’t bad for you, but if you can’t stop yourself from stuffing fistfuls of it in your mouth at a time (i’m guilty of this one) then maybe candy is bad…for you.

Eddie

Your second paragraph has been the point I have been wanting to make, there is gray area where discussion and necessary and discernment will differ from person to person.
But there are lines where something crosses from the gray into the dark, and being able to say it has crossed that line I think is as important as the discussions about the gray. As for the candy metaphor, all of what you said is true, but there is also a line where no matter who you are, at that point the candy is having a negative affect on you.

Kyla

Dustin, I absolutely love this article.

For me, the line is horror elements. I hate graphic violence and I can’t handle most scary movies (I once saw a few clips from a zombie movie and I spent a week looking for escape routes wherever I went). I watched the first two seasons of Supernatural and I’m honestly surprised that I made it through; I just couldn’t go any further. And, while I’ve been told a few times that it gets less scary, I just don’t want to get anymore involved.

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